Heiner Binding

In the context of the exhibition New Beginnings the painter Heiner Binding (*1958, lives in Cologne) affords us insight into his art practice, manifested in artworks created over a period of some forty years. Originally taking a specific object as his starting point, he has since succeeded in encouraging the paint – which seems to be fleetingly applied – to become autonomous, conjuring up a distant memory of summertime studies of nature. In his most recent series he returns to older works once abandoned and reinstates their authenticity in new contexts. The fragile pictorial architecture of his paintings and their reverse sides, along with fragments of material and lath constructions, provoke associations to snapshots of lived and elapsed experience. Applying colour with subtlety, he infuses these makeshift loosely juxtaposed conglomerates with the atmosphere of deliberate care and reflection that is characteristic of his work as a whole. With the exception of the large drawing for a billboard entered for a competition in 1997 all the works in the exhibition are being shown for the first time, including a selection of short film sequences (2010–2019), produced by Heiner Binding over the years (on show in the Room 5 extension).

List of works: Untitled (Drawings), 1983, tempera and watercolour on paper | Cabinet, 2019, mixed media and works 1997ff. | We still have a long way to go, 2019, mixed media and works 1984ff. The diary of the same dream II, 2019, mixed media and works 1997ff. |Large bird, small bird, 2017–2019, found object, oil paint on wood | …I have left the untitled faction, 2010, oil paint on LWD. | Untitled (a forest condensed to a minimum), 1997, charcoal and chalk on paper (billboard)